You seem to be claiming that LLM is necessarily integral to iPhone. I am suggesting that need not be the case.
Remember, half of the consideration here is to find a way for Apple to recoup it's investment in LLM. Without creating anti-competitive forces in another market. If you have a different suggestion, or if you think Apple doesn't deserve compensation, make your case.
By EU DMA, Apple is not allowed to develop a free feature in iOS (!) in order to recoup the cost by restricting it to their own brands and crushing the competition with it in ANOTHER product-segment (in this case, Headphones).
They could easily make this live translation feature a separate app using publicly available iOS-APIs. Every competitor would be able to develop and provide the same feature.
Ah, not integrated enough for them? Fair enough, then whatever further integration they see fit needs to provide interoperability for competitors.
That's exactly the stance of the EU DMA.
If an LLM, apple or otherwise, runs on a phone, with audio input and output, then airpods and AliExpress five dollar earbuds should both be able to perform the I/O. I don't see a technical reason the latter is impossible. Indeed, it seems like it should work with the phone mic and speaker and no headset, too.
This isn't rocket science: audio goes into mic => STT engine => translation model => TTS engine => audio comes out of speaker. As a fellow hacker here, you could piece together something like this in a weekend on your computer for fun.
As for your question though: they can charge a subscription for using their LLM if they want, or charge for this specific app/feature of iOS. Or just be like me: whenever I'm about to execute on a business plan, I ask myself: "Is this business plan economically feasible without breaking the law?" And if it is not, then I do not do that plan. So far I haven't been cited for illegal conduct by any unions of dozens of countries, so it appears this tactic works.
you completely lost me. the issue is the eu forbids "feature X on product A only workd if you buy product B, which already have market alternatives"
your post doesn't even get close to the subject
I don't know what to say. I have tried to point it out more than once. I agree with EU's approach to earbud access, but am also sympathetic to Apple wrt to ROI on its LLM.
Perhaps the issue you seem to be having is that there's nuance in a position which tries to see an issue from both sides. Whatever is the problem with your comprehension, I advise you to reflect on the fact that others in this thread seem to get it and some have raised valid counterpoints or added relevant information.